Mika Rottenberg

"My films are first and foremost about materials and textures. I want people to have a physical connection to the work. That is why I create viewing devices, installations around the film that accentuate the relation between the body and space. Through the setting I want to make viewers aware of the surrounding architecture and go back to their physicality…I want a visitor to the show to prepare him or herself to see the work. It is the same as in the movies: the cinema is a middle space between reality and illusion."Mika Rottenberg, excerpted from her interview with Ann Demeester in Mika Rottenberg.

This volume offers a comprehensive look at the career of Mika Rottenberg (born 1976). Each chapter is devoted to one of the major videos/installations for which Rottenberg has become known, with an abundance of installation views, video stills, planning diagrams and source materials. Additional illumination is provided through texts by Rottenberg herself that accompany each project. The book also includes drawing and photography, significant bodies of work by Rottenberg not previously explored in book form. Also included is a major new text by award-winning poet, novelist, humorist and cultural critic Wayne Koestenbaum, as well as texts on the artist by Rose Art Museum director Christopher Bedford, and author and theorist Julia Bryan-Wilson. The book also contains a thorough biography and bibliography of the artist to date, making this a comprehensive resource on Rottenberg.

The ersatz factories and farms that appear in the video-installations of Mika Rottenberg (born 1976) are tended by female laborers with unusual features. Uncommonly fat, tall, muscular or long-haired women work on strange, alchemical assembly lines to turn red fingernails into maraschino cherries, or to squeeze together blush, lettuce and rubber into a curious and magical product. Published on the occasion of Rottenberg's retrospective exhibition at de Appel Arts Centre, Amsterdam, this first publication on the acclaimed young artist presents a comprehensive overview of her work to date. It includes extensive sections on all of Rottenberg's major video installations, culminating with her latest, “Squeeze” (2010). Video stills, diagrams, drawings and previously unpublished source material are interwoven with essays investigating the work from political, philosophical and historical perspectives. Interviews conducted by the artist with some of the performers whose extreme physiques she showcases in her videos provide unique insight into Rottenberg's process of blending fact and fiction to create her highly original work.